Erik Nitsche was born
in 1908 in Lausanne, Switzerland. He studied and was trained in his home
country and in Germany (where he became familiar with the Bauhaus principles
of styling) before settling in Paris in 1931.

He was soon hired
by Maximilien Vox to work for "Le Service Typographique", a
local printing and design business. Among his many assignments he designed
the graphics for the Transatlantique group of hotels in French North Africa-
letterheads, menus and (you guessed!) luggage labels.

Maximilien Vox, his
employer, was also a prolific writer on matters related to design and
typography thanks to what we now have data on Nitsche's work in this rarely
mentioned field.

.

Nitsche's labels show
a distinctive deco styling but frequently lack in the elegance of his
later poster work (the artist himself would one day reminisce on how he
learnt the subtleties of elegant styling during his Parisian years).

In 1934 Nitsche left
for the United States where he would do covers and artwork for many of
the top American fashion and decoration magazines. In 1955 he was fortunate
to be awarded a contract by General Dynamics for which he designed a set
of posters that made him known to the general public- but I digress...

.

Most
(but not all) of the circa 20 hotel luggage labels designed by Nitsche
bear, either his signature ("Erik Nitsche"), or his monogram
(a tilted "N"). All those I know of are for hotels of the
same chain in French Algeria, Tunisia or Morocco, but there may well
be others that I have never seen.

This
article is illustrated by a selection of 10 of Nitsche's labels by which
the varying quality of his early work may be asserted. The prize of
the set is, in my opinion, the brilliant design for the Hotel de la
Mamounia (Transatlantique) in Marrakech. Unfortunately this label is
quite rare.

.

Other worthy designs
are those for the hotels of the chain in Bou-Saada, Constantine and El-Golea
(the last one being the rarer of the three).

The label for the
hotel in Meknes (see bottom of this article) is different from the others
in several respects and may well represent an early effort. The excessive
yellow areas and the lack of a strong central motif make it a notoriously
uninteresting label.

The label design for
the hotel in Ghardaia, at right, is also (in my opinion) a failed attempt
on account of the excessive squareness of the simplified building which
the stylized sun does not quite compensate for.

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Nitsche who, unfortunately,
passed away in November 1998 did, in time, become a well-known, appreciated
and influential modernist graphic artist and designer. But his reputation
derives, in a great measure, from his work in the US (where there seems
to be a fascination for European expatriate artists) and it is likely
that he would not be widely known today had he made a career in his homeland.

His luggage labels
are an example of the early work of a young artist and he cannot, thus,
be judged by them. Yet, there is an undeniable appeal in their Art Deco
styling because it is so readily recognizable. The fact that a whole series
of altogether different designs exists, all part of the same set, is another
strong point for the collector and a good reason for everyone to go sniffing
around for Nitsche's labels and thus make it impossible for me to ever
be able to complete a whole set. C'est la vie!

.

Credits:

Thanks to David Levine
for bringing this artist to my attention and for data on his work.

David has a superb
group of pages on the graphics of travel advertising which I will never
be able to equal.